Assange to eventually resume broadcasts on Russian TV

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse

Julian Assange, AFP Photo

Julian Assange will resume his broadcasts on Russian television once his legal troubles are over, a Russian television journalist said today after meeting the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he has taken refuge.
 
"I spent an hour with him and we concluded that when all that is over, and I hope it ends soon, we will certainly resume cooperation with Assange," the editor in chief of RT (Russia Today), Margarita Simonian, told the daily Moskovskii Komsomolets.
 
Simonian said she recently visited the Ecuadoran embassy in London to speak with Assange, whom she found "fit and well, jovial, at ease." RT, the public television channel broadcast in English, Arabic and Spanish around the world, has already broadcast 12 programmes presented live by Assange who interviewed leading personalities.
 
The first programme, recorded in Britain and broadcast April 17, saw Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the sworn enemy of Israel and the United States, reaffirm his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is also backed by Moscow.
 
The latest programme was broadcast in May, before Britain's supreme court gave its green light for Assange to be extradited to Sweden where prosecutors want to question him over rape and sexual assault allegations from two women.
 
The Australian has since taken up refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy.
 
Quito granted Assange political asylum on August 16, but London has refused to let him leave Britain a free man.